Business screen magazine (1946)

paradox BY STANFORD SOBEL Editor's Note: As part of Business Screen's editorial effort to expand our coverage of the film industry, and to serve our readers more responsively, we have asked Stanford Sobel to write a regular column in these pages on various aspects of the industry as seen from tlie ratlier special viewpoint of the scriptwriter. Stan is already well l<nown to many of our readers, having written scripts for most of the leading producers and sponsors of films. Based in New York City, he is a member of The Writers Guild of America. {East), The Dramatists' Guild. American Medical Writers' Association, and the National Academy of TV arts and Sciences. Nobody Likes A Smart-Aleck, Or, A Portrait of Paradoxes When the brass of Business Screen first proposed that I write a regular column on our industry, as seen from the viewpoint of the scriptwriter, my initial reaction was that of mixed emotions . . . equal parts of caution, enthusiasm, and soft, tender reveries. Caution because all writers instinctively regard all editors the way pedestrians regard motorists or tenants regard landlords. Enthusiasm because they promised mc complete freedom in the language, the content, the ideas, the editorial posture, and the format of the column. And soft, tender reveries because the invitation reminded me of my first experience as a columnist. I was sixteen at the time, and it was in Detroit, and I was hired by the Detroit TIMES as their official sports correspondent at Northern High School. Each week, for the sum of three dollars, 1 delivered in person to the High School Editor of the paper, approximately 300 words of resumes on the games we played with other high schools, interviews with leading players or visitors, and editorial comments of my own on just what was needed to correct the errors of our coaches in order for Northern High to do better in the city-wide standings. Most of the columns were about football, swimming, baseball, trackand-field, basketball, because we were doing well in those and also because I felt that I was an expert pundit in all those sports. But one day I was standing at my locker when Gretchen Gustafson came over to talk to mc. (We had a lot of big, blonde beautiful Swedish students at Northern High.) She stood close to me in front of my locker in the hall and looked me straight in the eye. She could do this because she was exactly the same height as I was, although everything else about her was amply and magnificiently superior. "Why?" she demanded, "Have you written nothing in your column about the Girls Field Hockey Team?" "Well," I sort of gulped, "I don't know too much about Girls Field Hockey." Gretchen had a marvelous, totally indefinable odor about her when she was close to you ... an aphodisiacal mixture which I can recall to this day with a clarity I can bring to almost no other memory of my youth. It was some mysterious compound of Peel's soap, feminine athletic perspiration, and Detroit Board of Education library paste. She took another step toward me so that she pressed against me, blinked those long soft, curly lashes in front of her clear blue eyes and said: "We have a very good chance of getting into the All-City Quarter Finals and people should know it." By this time I was breathing spasmodically, and not too deeply. "Anything you say, Gretchen. I agree with you. Listen, why don't we do a whole column feature . . . you know, something about . . . "the sport that nobody knows' . . . behind the scenes . . . what goes on in the locker room ... we could start on the research this afternoon." Gretchen stepped back and delivered her next line, which was the first really practical advice anyone ever gave me about writing a column. "Stanford," she said reproachfully. Nobody likes a smart-aleck." Tliose of you who have had any dealings with large Swedish girls know that I cleaned up that last line a little. I went into this reminiscence because although it goes very much against my grain, I'd like to establish with my readers that I will try very hard not to be a smart aleck in this column. That's Rule Number One. Number two, I'm going to dispense with the editorial "we," not just because Ann Landers has done so, but because I've promised the editors and publishers that in return for their giving me this kind of freedom, they don't have to take any responsibility for the viewpoints expressed. These are not "our" views, but mine, and we are not "we," but I am me. And finally, the subject matter as indicated by the title of this column. I will be addressing myself in these pages to the paradoxes of our industry. A scriptwriter gets around to a lot of industries as a visitor or guest, and every industry has its own paradoxes. But none, I feel, has as many as the film industry. You know of course what a paradox is m general ... a situation contrary to common sense, but nevertheless true. Like ... we have people starving in the country, but we're paying farmers to raise less food. That's a socio-economic paradox. But how about these in our own Continued on next page OCTOBER, 1970 S3